Tag: Andy Blake

On Wednesday, September 14, Ranson and Charles Town citizens and leaders sloshed into Charles Town’s Old Opera House from a dusk downpour to celebrate the conclusion of an intensive week of planning with their consulting team.

“Unless you were on the third floor of city hall this week to watch these people work,” said Ranson Mayor A. David Hamill, “it would be hard to imagine how hard they went at it…” [cont.]

More than 80 folks turned out on a rainy Thursday night, September 8, for the kick-off of a weeklong workshop to shape the future of the Ranson/Charles Town region.

The evening was part celebration of what’s already taken place, the coming-together of the two towns in an historic planning effort, and part introduction to an intensive week of collaboration… [cont.]

When acting Ranson city manager Andy Blake got the feeling that the scheduled August 2 workshop was going to attract more folks than everyone originally thought, he decided to switch the venue from the community room at City Hall to the larger Independent Fire Hall a block away.

Good thing. More than 50 people signed in on Tuesday night, listened to Ranson’s consulting team explain the process ahead and took part in an exercise to evaluate how the city currently devotes space to people, cars, buildings and green space… [cont.]

From September 8 through the 14th, 2011, we as a community charted the course for our next century.

In an unprecedented week-long mega-workshop, city officials, residents, business community and a team of international consultants considered ideas and actions to help guide Ranson, Charles Town, and Jefferson County towards a future rich in opportunity for our families and businesses.

The Ranson-Charles Town community was selected by HUD, DOT and EPA to serve as a national model for how small rural cities on the fringe of a major metropolitan area can foster sustainable economic development, transit, and community livability through targeted and strategic planning and infrastructure investments.

To facilitate this transformative change, planning funds facilitated the following linked and interdependent project components:

+ Develop a new zoning overlay district for downtown, as well as undeveloped, outlying areas of the Cities;

+ Redesign the Fairfax Boulevard-George Street Corridor into a "complete street" with green infrastructure, to promote a better transportation route for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit;

+ Design a new regional Charles Washington Commuter Center in downtown Charles Town that will facilitate access to regional rail and bus transit systems for Ranson, Charles Town and Jefferson County; and

+ Create a master plan for downtown Ranson that spurs job growth and economic development in former dilapidated manufacturing sites.

This archival site tells the story of that process.

“We couldn’t be happier about the way this is shaping up,” said Ranson Mayor A. David Hamill at the time. “It is our goal to continue evolving Ranson into a vibrant community where residents can live, work, and recreate within cohesive neighborhoods."

"Exciting things are beginning to happen, and I expect the coming years to be even more exciting as the real work begins.”